Granny Buttons

I've found my first geocache!

Geocaching is something I always thought I'd leave until I had some retirement time.

But last weekend, while we were taking Granny from Streethay to Birmingham, Christine asked me "What is this gee-thing?", since she'd heard it talked about on the radio earlier in the week.

So I was prompted to download the Geocaching Intro app to my iPhone 3GS and give it a go on the Curdworth flight.

The first time - above Lock 8 - was wasted, as it seemed to point me towards a permanently moored boat, and I wasn't about to step aboard uninvited for such a frivolous reason.  But the second attempt, at the next lock (Lock 7) ... bingo!  It took a little time, circling a tree:  It's here, I'm sure it's here somewhere I told Christine as she got more impatient and Granny drifted mid-channel.

But we eventually found it nestled in a hollowed elbow of the tree.

When I opened the box it was Christine who immediately spotted the significance of the toy figure.  I thought it was one of Snow White's dwarves, but no.

"Ooh, look, it's a granny!"

The custom of geocaching is to leave a little token gift and remove one that someone left earlier.  So I took the 'granny' and left a treat-sized packet of chocolate buttons.  I mean, what could be more apposite?

Sharp-eyed parents who've had to endure thousands of episodes of Postman Pat will notice that the 'granny' is actually Mrs Goggins, the village postmistress in the show.

I signed the little book, returned the box to the camouflage bag it came in, and returned it to its nest.  I then tweeted my excitement, and soon got a reprimand from Will Chapman of NB Quidditch (@qbuster):

@grannybuttons Welcome to geocaching! But gcetiquette states don't leave edibles in a geocache - it is likely to attract rats/mice etc .

Oops.  Sorry, didn't know that.  I thought I was simply being generous.

But by the time Will sent his tweet I'd already found the next two geocaches on the lock flight and put chocolate buttons in those as well. 

In fairness, the chocolate buttons packets are sealed and in eleven years of buying buttons  I've never seen them opened by wild animals (except for various children.)  The geocache containers are sealed too, and it would take a resourceful seal to break through both animals.

Geocaching itself really eats through my phones battery, though, using perhaps 2% of the battery every minute, and I soon tired of the hobby.  

As I originally suspected, such a hobby needs a LOT of free time.  As with Christmas crackers, the anticipation and the opening is a lot more fun than the shakeout of the miserable treats afterward.  If I'm to keep doing it, I'd be a lot more generous than most people.  Even treat-sized packets are stingy by my standards.

If I was rich as well as retired, I might even leave £5 notes in the boxes, and check later to see if anyone was honest enough to declare that they'd taken it.  That might make it interesting enough for me.  But really, there's not much in the way of puzzle-solving, is there?  No cryptic clues, no sense of 'deduction'.  Just get within a few feet, then poke around anywhere that no one would normally go.

L & L closure is chance to fix Red Rock Bridge

The upcoming stoppage of the drought-stricken Leeds & Liverpool Canal is a golden opportunity to do some maintenance.

Fix this historic bridge, reports Wigan Today, about a bridge strike from last year at Red Rock. (Google Maps location here)

And they have a point.

A runaway farmer’s tractor ploughed into Red Rock’s Bridge 63, shunting ancient stonework into the Leeds and Liverpool canal below.

Traffic engineers were quickly on the scene to drop large concrete blocks in front of the damaged section of the over bridge to prevent vehicles accidentally taking a wrong turn into the canal.

Now, almost 12 months after the accident, and there is no sign yet of proper repair to the picturesque structure.

Wigan vet Richard Weston – who lives around 100 yards away and passes the bridge every day to get to his Anrich Surgery – is demanding action to make the temporary repairs permanent.

He wants British Waterways engineers to take advantage of the controversial closure ... to dredge the valuable stone sets out of the canal’s muddy shallows and use them to rebuild the canal bridge.

... Mr Weston said: “I’m concerned that, in this time of spending cuts, this will be allowed to slide lower and lower down the repairs agenda. It isn’t just a matter of these concrete blocks looking pretty awful and spoiling such an attractive feature for Wigan which is so well known by visitors.”

But British Waterways has a point too - see my post from last February, Granny Buttons: Bridges of BW's Sighs.  (And see BW's Flickr set of photos of bridge strikes, A Bridge Too Far.)   BW are quoted in the paper as saying:

“The growing number of bridge strikes comes at a time when there is reduced funding available to look after Britain’s 2,200 mile network of canals and rivers.

There are no immediate plans to fix the damage caused to Red Rock Bridge, which is estimated to cost around £20,000.

“The sheer scale of the network, combined with our limited resources, means that we have to focus on key risks and priorities to ensure the waterways remain safe and meet the minimum needs of our customers.”

It does seem that the drought stoppage would be a good time to do this job, but BW's phrase, 'sheer scale of the network', brings home the problem.

Maybe BW can crowdsource the answer:

1. Partition off jobs according to whom they affect - boaters, cyclists, anglers, pedestrians, road users, vets etc.
2. Have us all vote our least favourite repair off the list.  Like in a TV reality show. 

I think it is beholden on people who want their local problem fixed to 'vote down' someone else's.

I don't know BW would like it, though.  I mean, the first thing most boaters would do is vote down extra bollards on their local locks.  

New Marsworth wharf plans still don't take account of boats

BW's abortive effort last year to redevelop the land at Marsworth Junction (see 'How was this Marsworth application slipped through...?') has been followed by another one, with planning documents lodged a month ago with Aylesbury Council.

As usual I can find little discussion about it on the web.  Here is Narrowboat World's contribution, while here is Towpath Talk's report, both basically reprinting press releases.

If you've got nothing else to do you might find something annoying in the planning documents, here on the Aylesbury Vale District Council's planning portal.

I rather enjoyed the fruitless Ecological Survey, which managed to find no protected species on the site, and also the imaginative Bat Mitigation Plan, which seems to offer a reason for bats to come and stay anyway.

Another bit of fun was a comment from the 'Crime Prevention Design Advisor, who bewailed that this Bat Mitigation seemed to take precedence over designs that discouraged burglars:

I also enjoyed the 'pedestrian deterant fence' [sic], which sounds fun - does it give walkers electric shocks?

There are a couple of representations against  the new development from local residents and local societies.

But what none of the plans nor the protests seem to take into account is BOATS.  There's nothing about, say, visitor moorings. or shop or commercial/industrial facilities that might encourage boaters to stop and be involved in the site.

An Inland Voyage - Robert Longden exhibition running until Aug 30th

You've got a month to see the Robert Longden exhibition An Inland Voyage at the Herbert Gallery in Coventry, before it closes at the end of August.

The exhibition, I mean, not the gallery.  I previewed it on Granny Buttons here, last month, and went to see it myself a few days later.

It's a display of about 3 dozen of the remaining photos of Robert Longden, who spent several years recording the lives of the old working boat people at Coventry and around Hawkesbury Junction.

It's been put together by Stephen Pochin, great-grandson of Longden (he's the big one in the picture below), and includes an assortment of old working boat accoutrements loaned from the Stoke Bruerne Canal Museum.  He's giving a talk about the exhibition on August 17th.

I wish I'd been there last Monday, when Sonia Rolt appeared in person, to gave a talk in the gallery.  Actually, she's there every day, albeit as part of a 10-minute video, a sort of moving picture alongside the other photos.

One of the most interesting of the accessory exhibits was examples of the 3" square glass slides from which the images are printed, and examples of the equipment used to display them in talks he gave at his local photographic society.  

Seeing this equipment really brought home to me how much photography has changed.  When I was a photography student 40 years ago this equipment was already antedeluvian, but it was similar in principle to the methods I was then using. 

The photos are really lovely quality, and it's amazing to think that not only are the pictures - some of them almost poster-sized - taken from these glass slides, but that the slides themselves were taken from 35mm originals.  Copies of copies.  Remarkable.

Tragically, most of Longden's original negatives were cast out by impatient and unconcerned relatives after his death about 50  years ago.  These few dozen 'magic lantern' slides were all that was left, somehow overlooked in an outhouse of his Coventry home, and only rediscovered years later.

They say that education is what's left when you've forgotten everything you learned at school.  Well, I was perhaps in the last generation of photography students to learn studio photography with old-fashioned brass & mahogany bellows cameras and to embrace digital photography, and I like to think I straddle both worlds.

So, using my education, guesswork and a little bit of back-of-the-envelope calculating, and factoring in all the things forgotten, I'd estimate that these photos might be equivalent to 4 megapixel images, maybe smaller.

But they look superb.   Megapixels really aren't everything.

By the way, if you haven't already seen the August Waterways World, Stephen's written a great 5-page companion article to this exhibition, as part of the magazine's regular 'Canals on Camera' series (right).

(If you are reading this much later, search on WW's site for back articles.)

I was fascinated to see, in one of the pictures, an interior of a narrowboat liveaboard conversion (below).  This would have been taken perhaps in the 1940s,  or early '50s at latest.  It certainly long predates the modern industry of building liveaboard 'floating cottages'.

And yet, what style!  It  shows floor-to-ceiling shelving surrounding a little pot stove, and a remarkably modern sense of homeliness, yet with far more taste than the spartan 'Ikea' fitouts that you see too often at modern boat shows. 

Perhaps it's due to the presence of books on the shelves?  Bookshelves are a rare sight in most narrowboats I enter.  I mean, proper shelves, designed for proper books, designed to be properly read; not just space to store a few canal guides and DVDs.

Which brings me back to my woeful education and all the things I've forgotten.  I really need a few more bookshelves on Granny. 

Not to mention a few more nice waterways pictures on Granny's own walls.  I've already got some, and they are all my own work, I'm pleased to say, but there's plenty of space for more.

Meandering Matriarch's week on hotel narrowboats Snipe and Taurus

The blog Meandering Matriarch is the 'travel notes' of Sue Ellen, a lady who does a lot of post-retirement travelling. 

She's just spent a week on hotel narrowboat pair Snipe & Taurus, travelling from Chester to the River Weaver via the Anderton Lift.  

The first post is Cruising England's Canals In A Narrowboat.   Read forward from there.  She's also promised to write up her experience of the Anderton Lift, which provided the entertaining end to the journey.

This is the first blog post I've seen of a hotel narrowboat holiday from a passenger's perspective.  And it's great PR for Neil and  Corinne Thomsett, Taurus & Snipe's operators.

I was amused and interested by one small clue in Sue Ellen's description of the boats.  She says:

I had a lovely week cruising a wee bit of England’s canalways in a narrowboat, run by Neil and Corinne Thomsett, of Snipe and Taurus. 

I should say a pair of narrowboats: a motor and a ‘butty’  pair.  (for those of you who speak normal English, as in American, butty rhymes with footy).  The butty is towed or tethered alongside the one with the motor.

I say 'amused' because she says "normal English, as in American".

I say 'interested' because she seems to have heard a northern pronunciation of 'butty'. 

This got me thinking:  How did the boatman of old pronounce it?  And did it vary around the country or between different types of boater?

Incidentally, while it's inevitable that there's no time for busy hotelboat operators to blog, I was happy to see Neil and Corinne are at least tweeting as @hotelboats, and their steerer for this season is also tweeting, as @katobell.  Now, who'll be the first guest to tweet?

Mercia Marina holiday lodges

I should be grateful for the mercies granted me. 

Mercia Marina used its open weekend festival earlier this month to launch the 18 new 'waterside lodges' they are erecting in a corner of the site, overlooking the marina and facing into the sunset.

(See www.merciamarinalodges.co.uk)

They are being sold on 50-year leases, with the proviso that you can only occupy them up to 11 months a year (some holiday!) and you need to have an alternative address as they are technically not 'residential'.

The first one, the show house, went up stunningly quickly, in a matter of days, although I presume they'd already laid out the services - sewage, electricity, etc - months before.

My first thought, when I heard the idea and saw the initial designs a year or so back, was that perhaps it was a bit 'caravanny', not quite my scene (to put it snootily).

In fact I was quite impressed with the reality.  It reminds me of the small cottages you get in New England.  The house seemed quite spacious inside and as luxurious as any modern apartment development.

With any development you always wonder how they'll fit a quart of houses into a pint-pot of land, and this development is no different.

It was startling to learn the show house was sold almost instantly, to one of the first couples to look round.

This couple already had two boats on the marina - one of those fat 'widebeam narrowboats' and a gorgeous inspection launch - and when I expressed my surprise at how nice their new pad was they kindly gave me a quick tour of their boats nearby too.  This gave me a serious case of property envy. 

I mean, fancy that - 'his & hers' boats and a smart holiday home!   Not to mention (presumably) a lovely permanent house somewhere else.  Several dream rungs on the property ladder all at once. 

My impression is these holiday homes do have is a more impressive 'view' than the boats.  It's inevitable, since they overlook the marina, instead of being close to water.

 

For example, compare the scene from the living room (above) looking out, with the equivalent scene from their boat nearby (below).

A good vista needs at least a slight elevation to give an impression of 'depth' as well as 'far away', and I don't think you'll ever have one when you are close to water.

I moved into my own little house not far from the marina last year, and when I mentioned it, the lady said "The one with the lovely roses around the door!  Oh, what a coincidence!  We'd thought about buying that when it was up for sale, but we missed out.  So you live there now, what a coincidence.  How lovely for you!" 

I'd not thought about this, but it's true.  I've got lots of lovely roses around the door.  There's not much inside, and it was all I could afford, but at least I've got the facade of a dream. 

I returned to my little home feeling humbled and very grateful to the couple for reminding me of my blessings.

People-watching on the Regent's Canal

The Summer Boozers - New Statesman

A lovely little essay by Michael Hodges in this weekend's New Statesman - 500 words  of people-watching by the side of the Regent's Canal.  It begins:

This, then, is how we take our leisure when the sun comes out in 21st-century north London. We are at the canal, where the Victorian architecture rots and crumbles and a crowd has gathered to soak up the sun and alcohol. On the canalside, vodka bottles, beer cans and boxes of Pinot Grigio denote fractions of social hierarchy. But whatever their status, everyone here ultimately has the same levelling objective - to get very pissed by the water.

One group has had particular success in this endeavour. All in their twenties, the men wear vests and trousers that finish just below the knee and the women dangle Brazilian flip-flops over the edge of the quay. They are not drunks, but they are drunk and the air around them is thick with dope smoke. The combination of this, the heat and high-octane wine has rendered them imbecilic. As each boat comes past, they appear freshly delighted that there should be boats on the canal, and call out greetings. ...

Now read on.  I love the last paragraph.

Michael Hodges doesn't say where it takes place, but you can make educated guesses, although it could easily be a composite.  The Narrowboat pub in Islington or somewhere at Camden Lock, perhaps.

He paints an odd picture of canal boaters, though:

Holding their tillers tightly and concentrating on the combination of locks they must navigate, the captains wear fanciful approximations of naval uniforms, which attract the mocking attention of the watching crowd. Several have peaked caps. One, without apparent irony, wears a Captain Birds Eye beard.

Let alone 'fanciful approximations of naval uniforms' (when was the last time you saw that on the canals?) I've no idea how a boater "wears a Captain Birds Eye beard", without - or even with - irony.

Carpet salesmen Boulton, Watt and Murdoch

I'm headed up to Birmingham again this weekend. Hopefully.

Granny's not moved much lately, as you might have observed.

The last time I was there, a couple of months ago, I popped by for a chat with David and Brenda Scowcroft of NB David, normally moored in Gas St Basin.

They have a lovely backdrop now, in the almost-finished 'Cube', which frankly looks more like a 3D Tetris game. 

I mentioned a remarkable golden statue I'd seen nearby in 'Centenary Square', of some local historical figures, and David said:

Oh, you mean 'the carpet sellers'. 

Well, I didn't spot that, and it piqued my interest, so I had to return and look. 

And yes, David's right!  They are the holy trinity of Birmingham's industrial revolution - Boulton, Murdoch and Watt - and their pose shows them discussing the plans for a steam engine, but looking for all the world like they are haggling over the quality or width of a magic carpet.

See the official Birmingham City Council page about this statue.

 

Ordinarily I'd have said gilt was too gaudy for a public statue, but it works surprisingly well for this set of figures.

The official Birmingham City Council photo shows it before its new gilt, but without the requisite accretion of pigeon droppings that give old public statues an absurd majesty. 

In my case, this photo represents great patience and artifice.  I was blessed with lovely weather that made the statues glow, but I was careful to position myself so that the sun gave Boulton a saintly halo. 

That wasn't enough, though. I waited until there was breeze enough to blow the flag of the European Gymnastics Championships, taking place in the city at the same time.  That pole wasn't going to go away, so I might as well work it into the composition.

If  you want to see the statues with 'a better sense of place' - that is, incorporating some local landmark - try this one with the nearby Hyatt Hotel towering over them.  But too many blog posts are spoiled by excessive photography, so I'll stop here.

Re Romeo's pants DIY TV dish: here's one Dave made earlier

Seeing my post about hireboat Romeo's homespun hi-tech DIY TV dish,  Dave Edwards of NB Sophie-Jane 2 emailed:

If it comes to a patent battle, we would like to claim "prior art" for our mobile broadband booster.

Dave, an electronics engineer, says that while the family boat was being painted last year his family spent a week in the Lake District, frustratingly in a very poor mobile broadband signal area.

I eventually gave into my wife's demands to apply my engineering skills, so that she could log onto Facebook:

The colander in the cottage was a poor approximation of a parabolic reflector, but it made a slight difference.

Jen, our daughter, Lucy and I walked into Keswick, leaving our son, Robert to build the Mk II version, using foil to make a better parabola.

I reckon this gained about 4dB and was henceforth referred to as "The Blue Peter mobile broadband signal booster - here's one we made earlier".

Dave modestly apologises for the photo, which presumably he sent as evidence, not as part of the 'prior art' itself.  But like the colander I guess it does the job.

BW statement about falling trees

I don't want this blog to be all about falling trees, but BW has put out a statement about that 'Sad end to willow woes' story.

They point out that the tree was on private land, and thus it's someone else's fault:

British Waterways (BW) is deeply saddened to learn about the death of the boater who was involved in an accident on the Grand Union Canal near Stoke Hammond on Thursday 15 July and we would like to send our sincere condolences to the family.

The female boater was hit by a falling tree, that was located on private property, which subsequently knocked her into the canal. The boater was then transported by air ambulance to Milton Keynes Hospital where she sadly died as a result of her injuries.

The tree fell onto the canal from private land. It is the responsibility of all land owners to maintain and care for the trees on their property and ensure they do not pose a risk to others.

As neighbouring land owners we will be happy to act upon any recommendations from the Police or other sources. We would like to assure all boaters and towpath users that such accidents on the canal are extremely rare.

BW carries out safety assessments on all the trees located on BW property to prevent this type of incident occurring. BW actively pursues riparian land owners if trees on their land encroach on the waterway and restrict navigation.

Of course, keeping an eye on trees that look like they might be at risk of falling is one thing.  But knowing when a tree is weak can be tricky.  And the process of forcing a 'riparian land owner' (i.e. the owner of the bank of the canal or river) to carry out his obligations - such as to trim or remove a tree - must be a lengthy and costly process.

I mean, BW spent nearly £5,000 on solicitors' fees last year just to force a landowner on the Llangollen Canal near Wrenbury to remove his boat and repair his broken-down canal bank. 

(Incidentally, I wrote about that peculiar episode last month - not here on Granny, but in Waterways World, available from, ahem, all good newsagents. 

I'll tell the story from Granny's point of view shortly, but if you don't want to know the result, look away now.

Result:  Landowner 2 - 0 BW. ) 

If  you haven't seen a tree fall near boats, here's what one looks like.  Last year near Norton Junction I was moored up for the night and slept right through this one, which fell over and blocked the canal a hundred yards away. 

 

BW's contractors had it cleared away by late-morning, but it was only grace à Dieu that no boat was moored there or passing at the time.

Sad end to 'willow woe' story

Grandmother killed after being knocked into canal by falling tree - Daily Telegraph

The lady who was knocked overboard last Thursday after a willow tree fell on her canal boat has died in hospital.

(See my earlier post.)

I spoke to James Griffin of Wyvern Shipping. the hireboat company concerned, and he's keen for more detail to come out about the event.

He says he's mentioned before to British Waterways about trees growing too close by the canal, and believes that they don't have to be old to cause a threat. 

In this case the family were near the winding hole at Stoke Hammond Lock on Thursday afternoon, [Google Maps location here] when a sudden gust of wind blew down quite a willow tree onto the back of the boat, where the grandparents and children were clustered. 

I'm not sure which tree, but it might be this one. 

There's also a good aerial view on Bing Maps (pictured right).

The boys managed to duck in time, but the grandfather was briefly stunned, for perhaps a couple of seconds.

When he recovered he realised his wife had vanished, then saw her submerged and trapped under the tree branches behind the boat.  He managed to bring the boat to a halt and instructed the children to pull it in and call 999, while he dived in with his son to try to free the lady.

However it's a very isolated location and it wasn't until another boat arrived  5 mins later, before they were able to attempt any practical rescue, and another 10 before the lady was brought ashore.  By then it was too late.

James says that if you've got any photos of other such potentially dangerous trees, let him know - he's compiling a list.

62 is the new Mix96

You know the awful story of the woman who was knocked overboard near Stoke Hammond when a willow tree fell on her hireboat?

(See Willow woe for granny at Stoke Hammond.)

Well I've just noticed that local Bucks radio station Mix96 reported the story, and headlined it: 

Elderly Woman In Hospital After Buckinghamshire Canal Boat Accident

Harrumph!  She's only 62!

(Or 64, if Mix96's report is to be believed.)

How old is elderly?  I wonder if British Waterways have any statistics on the average age of canal boaters.  Especially now that far from being a kid's recreation, continuous cruising is more of a retiree's sport now.

But then again, to be fair, Mix96 is a radio station aimed at the elderly, as their name suggests.  Perhaps they were just trying to extend down to her demographic.

Poor man's satellite TV dish, £112 (plus pants)

I was walking along the towpath in the dusk yesterday when I came across hireboat Romeo tied up near Mercia Marina. 

The occupants had what looked - from a distance - like a mini-Jodrell Bank radio telescope stuck on the roof.

As I drew closer I noticed it was a colander sitting atop a TV aerial, combined with a curious metal 'spike' with a ring on the top and a bit of kitchen foil a pair of underpants underneath.

Naturally I just had to ask the purpose, but the chaps inside confirmed what I suspected - that they'd done it to increase reception.

The metal 'wand' sticking out the top was the paper towel holder. 

And apparently it worked!  The signal was not only stronger, but there was less 'ghosting'.

The aerial here (or should that be 'antenna') seems to be a Maxview Omnimax 360, which costs about £100.  

I don't know the brand of colander or paper towel holder, sorry.  But according to the boat's inventory the colander is listed as being worth £7 (replacement value if it's blown off and you lose it) while the kitchen roll holder is £5.  Making a total of £112.

Ghosting in particular is a real problem with 'omni' aerials.  I believe it happens where the TV signal 'bounces off  buildings and other structures nearby, and I guess that this location, in the shadow of the huge Willington power station cooling towers and with many pylons nearby, gives ample scope for ghost signals.   

I used to have a 'Grade' antenna, one of the ones that looks like the starship Enterprise, but it, too, suffered from ghosting more often than from low signal strength and was also as pricey as the Maxview. 

I ended up using a fairly cheap 'n' cheerful direction TV aerial, about £15 including a short pole to stick it up with.

This, of course, was long ago when I had a TV licence, and before I stopped watching TV.

Incidentally, the position of the colander will please Sarah Hale of Chertsey. 

As she has often pointed out - most graphically here, on her old NB Warrior blog a couple of years ago - there's a right and a wrong way to dry and store a colander after washing it, and I presume the same goes for using it as a TV antenna.  Or 'aerial' as I still prefer to call it.

Update: I must have been mistaken about 'kitchen foil'.  One of the hirers kindly comments below that it was a pair of underpants!  I must get either my eyes or my memory tested.

Pete Morgan goes on final voyage

Sorry to hear of the passing of Pete Morgan.  He it was who wrote and fronted the lovely 1983 TV series A Voyage Between Two Seas, a record of a canal journey between Liverpool and the Humber, via the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.

I wrote about it last year in my post 'A Voyage Between Two Seas - still going strong on DVD'.

Although I think of him as a canal programme maker, he's known publicly as a poet - and by any standards an eminent one.

Here's The Guardian obituary.

I wrote to him last year and received a kind, short reply, which mentioned that he'd thought about making other waterways programmes "particularly the Kennet and Avon" - which sounds to me like it could have been every bit as fascinating as the first one - although being a Yorkshireman and with his contacts being in the north, he could never get the commission.

The picture here is nicked from his personal website, www.pete-morgan.co.uk. 

At first sight it looks like it's a single-page website, although I stumbled on his powerful poem 'My enemies have sweet voices' on another - hidden - page. 

This suggests the programming on the website is in error and there are extra treasures to be found there, unlinked.  If you have time and the nous  you might like to ferret around for other hidden work on his website.

Incidentally, a couple of people have asked if they can get copies of the video series, and I haven't forgotten them, even if they've given up hope!